Fanfiction: 'Goodbye Horses'
Title: Goodbye Horses (because 'Rightly Dubbed' was a shit title).
Author: bramblyhuck
Rating: I rated this as 'M' on fanfiction.net, and I think that's the same as NC-17? Mostly rated like that for swearing, and general 'gore', if you want to call it that.
Characters: Charlie Prince
Summary: About a boy called Charlie Prince. From the grass to the hay, how he was raised, how he grew, and how he met Ben Wade.
Warnings: Swearing
A/N: I wanted to write some fanfiction about Charlie without it being all crappy and stuff. I decided to start from when he was young right up until he meets Ben Wade, or maybe all the way up until he dies, or whatever. It's written in first person from Charlie's perspective, so some 'mistakes' in the grammar are intentional, to give the text the feel of Charlie's voice.
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Prologue
THE NAMING OF THE PRINCE
When I was dispensed from my mother’s womb, I remained relatively un-named, at least by regular standards, for a length of days that I cannot count on both my hands. Papa Prince, though not lawfully married to my mother, who I was never approved to dub ‘Mother’, but rather ‘Mama’, decided that I would just be Little Prince. Baby Prince. Princeling. These are the names I was dubbed for the initial weeks of my life. Finally my Mama had the idea that she ought to write of me to her Mama, that is my Grandmother, who I am required to dub ‘Mooma’, though I am not sure why, and I have never met her anyway and she is probably dead now, so the consequence is little. Mama felt that it would not be correct to write of me without proper naming when addressing Mooma. She penned the entire correspondence, leaving long gaps where she thought to insert my name afterwards. Mama and Papa Prince were in long conversation about the subject of my naming, at least as long as a woman can keep in conversation with a drunkard. After the discussion of my naming was ended, Papa Prince did not care what I was to be dubbed, but required that whatever I was to become, I would be a Mister Prince. Even though Mama and Papa Prince never got rightly married.
Mama had free rein to dub me how she wished, but she had left considerable gaps in her correspondence wherein she intended to insert my name. This is how I came to be named so lengthily. I will never know if she pre-thunk what she was writing afore she wrote it, or whether she let the pen choose the name for her as it moved along the paper. But since that moment I have been rightly dubbed as most proper people are: Charles Maxwell Mordecai Eli Prince
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Chapter One
THE BLACK COACH
Papa Prince was never in the same mind when he was choosing what he wanted to dub me in ordinary conversation.
'Mordecai,' he says.
'Don't dub me so,' says I, tenderly nudging the age of six years.
'Maxwell -'
'Nor that.'
On most occasions he would land upon 'Charles', and this I allowed Papa Prince to dub me, though I was already in the early stages of knowing that it wasn't rightly what I felt I was to be dubbed. I had a feeling that I was destined for greater namesakes and things like that, and a status hinting to the laypeople that I am in the habit of customarily expending vast amounts of currency on costly, fancy things. Just shy of six years, I would envision my future wealth in the shapes of dancing horses, fine gold fastenings on all of my attire and a grand parrot for my shoulder, like the vicious pirates in the stories I heard about from the one-eyed farrier. I also dreamt of having a black glossy coach like the one I seen in the town, carrying people from the church up over the crest of the hill that Mama and Papa Prince had forbade me to explore. I wanted that coach so badly, least until I unearthed that it was carrying dead people, taking them up and over the hill because that is where they buried the dead people. I unearthed that, being that I am a fellow white-hot on fire with inquisitiveness, when I sneaked from the cabin where I lived with Mama and Papa Prince one night as a young'un, all the way to the hill to see what secrets were concealed there.
That night I experienced one of the worst frights of my entire life. I discovered upon my arrival at the bone orchard a pair of grave-robbers, digging up a freshly lain cadaver by the light of the moon. I watched them, morbidly distracted from thoughts of my own safety as they fractured the casket and dragged out that cadaver like Papa Prince does when he brings home a buck he shot in the mountains. It was a woman cadaver, and when I seen her I gasped so loudly that I wished with my entire, tiny little body that I could have sucked that pitiful gasp right back in. But I could not, and the grave-robbers heard me, then they saw me and they catched me. I was only a small thing, running as fast as I could, and I did not get more than half way down the side of the hill afore one of them lifted me in the air with a grip like the jaws of a wild cat. I remember the way he was hissing, that grave-robber, as mad as a lynx with a stick of dynamite stuffed up its bung-hole.
I yelled like a moon-freak in his fat, nasty face, pulling hard on his twisty beard the way I knew Papa Prince hated.
'PAPA'S GONNA BREAK YOU.'
* * *
I don't recall what occurred between then and when I awakened with a dreadful sore head in the grave-robbers' hut. I could have mistaken it for an over-sized shitter, the way it stank so terrible. I was laying on the dirt-packed floor in the corner with my wrists and ankles bound and a gag to shut my mouth up. There was a pail near my feet, so I kicked it hard, spilling the liquid in it and screaming wildly through the cloth in my mouth. I couldn't see all that much, but I could tell that there was a fire in an adjoining room and that I was alone where I had been dumped. Least until my hollering brung one of the grave-robbers stomping in, roaring at me to shut my fat bazoo. It was not the bloated Hairy One, but the other, a stringy fellow with very bad yellow teeth, all snaggly in his mouth like he'd made hisself some dentures from the teeth of a horse.
I growled at him, but he bent over and smacked me violently across the side of my face. I fell quiet and still, for Papa Prince had taught me that the first blow is just a warning and not as heavy as what will come if that warning isn't heeded. Even though I lay there silent and unmoving as a dead fish with my eyes stinging, the crazy bastard struck me again. He did so over and over, probably until his arm got tired, and then he kicked me once in the stomach, figuring he hadn't done enough already. After that he stood over me, huffing like a buffalo, then dragged me by the hair into the next room where the fire and the other man was.
I cried so hard that night, so hard I thought I'd cry my own brains out, right through my eye-sockets. Not even Papa Prince ever beat me that brutal, and he was a real curly wolf, especially when he'd downed more shots of whiskey than me and Mama could count on our fingers put together. These grave-robbers weren't curly wolves or even depraved criminals by any standard normal folks would go by, they were the kind of God-dodging, half-human lunatics the old crone at the bar liked to tell spook stories about.
They were goddamn cannibals.
At that time in my life I didn't really know what a cannibal was. Mama used to tell me things to keep me in line, like if I didn't get into bed when she told me, or eat all my supper, the Indians would snatch me and dance around me as I cooked in my own juices on their crazy big fires. That used to fright me a lot, the thought of getting eaten by savages, and I wish I'd remembered my Mama's spook stories afore I took it upon myself to sneak out in the middle of the night to visit that fucking bone orchard. Because there I was, bound and gagged in God-knows-where, watching a pair of madmen carving up a dead woman they filched from the ground, as nonchalant as if they was chopping vegetables. The Toothy One sucked on his bloody fingers every now and then. The Hairy One hummed through the smoke of his quirley like what he was doing was the most natural thing in the world.
It was in those moments that I realised I'd pissed myself, watching them take their chosen cuts, favouring the woman's liver and kidneys and the fleshy areas around her chest, thighs and rump, throwing them in the hotpot over the fire. My britches were wet and uncomfortable and my nose was running into the gag like a biblical flood. The fear of being killed and chopped up and eaten is too big to fit inside a child. It's the kind of fear that fills you right up and then overflows, making it so you can't even move your limbs or think straight. I just lay paralyzed on the ground, covered in piss and snot, with blood dribbling in my eyes, whimpering for my beastly father to come and beat the loonies into the dirt and save me.
I seen Papa Prince break a man before. It was when a worn out traveller came by our cabin, riding a nag fit only for the crows, begging at our door that we may be kind enough to let him sleep in the barn for the night, and maybe have a chunk of bread or something. Papa Prince had been at the bottle already and was in that jolly kind of drunk mood (the kind that me and Mama preferred), and invited the creepy, haggard stranger right into our home. Straight away I figured Mama wasn't so keen when she didn't offer him anything to eat or drink, and just stood with a buttoned-up mouth beside the stove, disallowing me to stray further from her side than the distance her apron strings would stretch.
The stranger stayed in the cabin a while, drinking with Papa Prince and talking about the boring stuff grown men talk about. He had badly kept hair and watery eyes that didn't point in the same direction. He was the first person I'd seen with black teeth. His mouth was kind of foamy and those soggy wall-eyes wandered a little too liberally, something even Papa Prince picked up on through the haze of the whiskey. He pointed a finger on one of those giant hands that I both loved and so sorely hated.
'What choo eyeballin'?' He slurred. He had the undertone that made me and Mama cling together at the back of the house when he used it on us. 'You eyeballin' ma woman? You eyeballin' ma boy?'
The stranger blinked and licked at the foam around his lips. 'Not like I'm even touchin' her, is it? Can't touch someone with your eyes.' A quavering smile hung a little too long on those repulsive lips, right afore he licked them again, his eyes roving all over Mama.
Papa Prince moved so fast I didn't even realise what was happening until I heard the stranger screaming and choking. Papa Prince had one of them shot glasses (I think that he stole from the bar) and was stuffing it hard into the stranger's mouth. The stranger was flailing violently, his fingernails scratching lines into our wooden floor and his bandy legs kicking at our supper table. I screamed for fear at the awful sounds he was making, and then ran and hid under Mama's apron when I saw one of his fingernails snap clean off on the floor. Mama was screaming too.
I didn't watch what Papa Prince did to him, but I will remember the sounds I heard that night until I die. I heard the stranger choking hard, and then a sickening gurgle and a crack. What I heard after that I recognised as the sound of Papa Prince's fists crunching into a face. That sound went on for what felt like the whole night, and maybe it was the whole night, because when he was finished there was nothing left of the stranger's head, just a pulpy, runny mass on our floorboards, spread far around the stranger's shoulders like a blossoming halo of gore. I saw chipped up bone in that red puddle, and teeth and hair and an eyeball. I don't know if Papa Prince used only his fists to do all that, but I remember feeling profound wonder and fear at the awesome rawness of his sadism.
Me and Mama both wiped his fists and face clean that night, her sat to his right and me to his left on the bed. He shook and breathed hard like a wild animal, but he let us clean him with no protest. My Papa was a monster, and monsters eat cannibals.
But Papa Prince wasn't there. I was lying on the floor, just about to get turned into a stew and my monster of a Papa wasn't there to beat the cannibals' brains into the ground. I wailed so hard through that gag, not particularly caring that my noise might make the Toothy One come over and kick me in my little lily-liver again.
'Quiet yourself, you flaxen runt,' the Hairy One snarled. 'I can't stand any of that bitchin' and whingin' from children. Shut your fuckin' trap, boy.'
The Toothy One was licking at his hands, seeming to be lost in thought. 'Y'know...' he started off carefully. 'We can't turn him loose. He'll talk.'
'No shit,' said the Hairy One, shaking his head and dipping a ladle into the hotpot to swirl the woman's meat around in the liquid. 'We're gonna cut his throat and dump him in the desert for crow bait.' He blew on the ladle and sipped to check the seasoning. 'After we eat.'
'We're gonna dump him?' The Toothy One turned to look at me all over, and I looked right back, my eyes as big in my head as those of an owl. I didn't realise that I had been holding my breath whilst they'd been talking about what to do with me. The Toothy One looked back at the Hairy One. 'We're just gonna throw him away? All that meat?'
The Hairy One became still, his eyes fixing on his cannibal friend, before rolling right around in his fat head to fix on me. He thunk long and hard about something whilst he was staring at me and it made me squirm, like there was a thousand worms trying to wriggle their way out from under my skin. He flicked the ash of his smoker to the side. 'He's kinda skinny.'
The Toothy One snorted and gave an ugly honk of laughter. 'But he's young! And fresh, not been in the ground. Like lamb meat, I'll bet. Imagine that liver. Imagine it.' He gazed down on me with the glint of the Devil himself in those eyes. 'Just imagine it, fried in butter...'
The talk of my freshness and lambiness and how my goddamn lily-liver was gonna taste fried in butter was too much. I had felt the faintest sparkle of hope when the Hairy One said they were gonna dump me in the desert, there might have been a small chance to escape between being taken out there and having my throat cut (unless they was gonna cut my throat first), but now my brain was saturated with the purest fear that every human prays to avoid. They wouldn't need to take me anywhere or hide me or whatever if they really were going to eat me. They could do it right there and then if they wanted to. My little heart was ready to beat its way right out of my ribcage; it was pounding so hard that it sent the sharpest pain right through my body and all along my backbone. I was sobbing again, but I had no tears left and it just felt like my head was turning inside out. I howled through the gag, trying to beg them not to eat me, but my words were lost and came out as a muffled parody through the snotty cloth. They roared with laughter. They could have brung the roof of the hut down with that raucous noise, and it made me sick to my stomach. I felt my guts churning hard; felt the hand that rises up through the chest and into the back of the throat, then clutches at the tongue and makes it feel tight. I whined as my stomach started pumping and the acid burnt my throat, but I couldn't spew right because of that fucking gag. I remember watching ribbons of vomit shooting out of my nose across the dusty floor. It was the worst thing I'd ever felt. Papa Prince's fists were like feathery kisses compared to that ache and shame.
'Shit!' I heard one of them shout. 'Fuckin' brat's gonna choke on his own vomit afore we get to kill him right! Fuck, take it off, take that fucking gag off!'
The Toothy One leapt over to me and ripped the gag off my head, tossing it into the corner with a disgusted face. He cursed sharply and put his foot into my gut, which only made me spew more of that horrid bitty slop, blooming on the ground in front of my face. 'Ah shit,' he grumbled. 'Look, he pissed hisself, too.'
The Hairy One grunted. 'Go get water out of the well. We'll splash him down afore we butcher him.'
The Toothy one was gone, going to get that water like the Hairy One told him to. My mind was elsewhere, in a different world by that point, so potent was my despair. It was like I'd come out of my body, because I remember what happened next as though I was watching it from someone else's view. The Hairy One trudged over to me, careful not to put his boots into my puddle of vomit and hauled me to my feet. He had to slap me real hard several times before I could stand by my ownself without slumping straight back down like a sack of dead rats. He was angry at me, that much I could tell. I figured the fat bastard was just cranky because that dead woman's meat wouldn't cook fast enough. He blew the smoke of a fresh quirley into my face, making my nose wrinkle. I stared hatefully into his rage-filled face, though somehow his anger was considerably pale compared to what washed over me and nearly drowned me in my own home when Papa Prince was on the war path. I carried on staring into his hideous, beardy face as hard and serious as any six-year old runt could, not caring that I had blood and vomit, tears and snot mashed all over me.
He just sneered at that, backhanding me and sending me reeling into the wall. I coughed, fresh tears bubbling over the rims of my big marble eyes. So I wasn't all that tough, not back in them days at least. I flinched when he marched toward me with a blade in his hand, thinking that was it, the moment when he was going to cut me and bleed me and then slice me up into steaks and stuff, but he didn't. He cut my bonds and barked at me to strip, because they were gonna wash me off and then hang me by my ankles. He said it was to let the blood pool in my head. Then they were gonna cut my throat and let it all drain out, skin me and cut me into strips, make me into jerky so that they could stretch me to last their appetites until they arrived in the next town, find the next bone orchard ready for the plundering.
Needless to express, I was shaking too ferociously to even make my namby-pamby little paws into fists, let alone direct them to undress myself. I just cried and gurgled. He was getting ready to beat me again when I nearly coughed my heart up at the sound of a booming gunshot, right outside the hut. I turned into a statue, my eyes nearly falling out of my head. The Toothy One had never returned with that water. The Hairy One kicked me to the floor with a snarl, spitting out his quirley as he drew his pistol in his spare hand, fleeing the room and running into the night. He might have thought it was his friend shooting at something in the distance that probably wasn't even there, but I sure as Hellfire knew who it was firing that gun outside. That gunshot was the hallowed battle cry of an 1869 Smith and Wesson Schofield. The same as Papa Prince used.
The Schofield blasted once more and I heard a man yelling like the hand of the Devil was trying to drag him down to Hell through a hole in the ground. There was a dull thudding afterwards, fairly rhythmic and steady, and I imagined Papa Prince was pounding on whoever he shot out there with his almighty fist, or maybe his boot. Maybe he was even using that Schofield like a club to stove the side of that cannibal's head in. I seen him whack a man upside his head with that Schofield in the bar when he realised he'd been cheated in a game of poker.
The thudding stopped. There were no more shouts from Papa Prince's gun. I was pissing down my leg again, shaking like a rattle-snake tail, watching as the woman stew started to boil over and make the fire hiss. There was a nasty scum on the surface of the water in the hotpot and as it bubbled out and into the flame it made a horrid stink. My tears were all gone.
'Papa!' I wailed. I knew it was him out there. 'Where are you?'
I heard the scuffing of footfalls in the dirt. Papa Prince barged into the room, his Schofield now holstered, which let me know he'd done taking care of the cannibals. He was staring hard at me where I stood stupefied in my own puddle of vomit, snot pouring abundantly and my fingers plucking at my uncomfortably wet britches. I howled, 'Papa!' I left worrying my damp crotch to hold my arms and hands aloft for Papa Prince to scoop me up and take me home to the cabin, but he didn't do that. Instead, with his face all red and his eyes popping, he came across the room in three giant strides and lent the back of his hand to my cheek. I howled, stumbling over and hitting my head against the rough stone wall. 'Papa!'
'Idiot boy!' He bellowed. 'Stupid boy! What was you thinking, runnin' away and gettin' snatched?'
Right then I didn't know what I was thinking; my brains had been knocked sideways that night more times than I could count. 'I just want to go home, Papa!' He hit me again, and I fell into my pond of vomit. 'Papa, I wanna go home! Take me home!' He hit me one last time, and started with his shouting again. My ears were filled with a noise like the sound of a rushing river and I couldn't hear anything that came out his mouth, even as he leant over me. I was weeping and whining. No doubt my face was as red as his. I managed to croak out my wish once more in a small, shuddering voice, 'I wanna go home, Papa.' He was stock still then, and I realised that he'd seen that dead woman on the other side of the fire, with her clothes all ripped off and her belly cut open wide with things hanging out, square chunks of her hips and thighs and breasts missing. Then he saw the hotpot, still bubbling over, the meat roiling violently. I couldn't see his face. He spat on the fire, then turned to grab my wrist, dragging me outside like a three-legged sheep. I saw the bloody mess of the Hairy One near the wall by the door.
'Papa -'
'Shut your face, Charles.'
He dragged me over to the well where I saw the body of the Toothy One slumped beside it, the bucket by his head. Papa Prince grabbed the bucket and set about filling it, and as he did so he ordered me to strip and throw my clothes and shoes away on the ground. 'You ain't never wearing those clothes again, boy.' I did as I was told, though I struggled with my still shaking hands. When he seen that I was fully stripped, he turned to me with that bucket, now filled with water. I stood waiting like a thick mule. I was only a young'un and I was severely shook up, considering I nearly got ate by two cannibals, but I guess anyone should have known what was coming next.
He threw the bucket of water, icy cold, all over my little candlestick body. I yelped. 'Papa!' He filled the bucket again. 'Papa, no!' He held the bucket still for a second. 'You're gonna rub yourself down.' Then he chucked the water over me. 'Get yourself clean, Charles.' It made me gasp like a lunger caught in a dust storm, how cold that water was, but I did as Papa Prince said and rubbed myself all over, cleaning my face and between my legs. I was painted with big ugly blue patches, mighty bruises from where that bastard had beat on me. Papa Prince was breathing hard through his nose as he surveyed me, frowning like he does when I know he's thinking deep. 'Your Mama's gonna have to make you a bath when we get back. She's gonna have to get that soap on you.'
I wasn't crying anymore. Papa Prince took off his over-jacket and wrapped me up tight in it, afore jumping on his horse, a red, dome-faced stallion as tall as a building in my young eyes. We dubbed him 'Dollar Bill', but sometimes he would walk to us from the paddock if we just dubbed him 'Dollar' or 'Bill'. Papa Prince found his stirrups and gathered the reins in one hand, whilst leaning from the saddle and stretching out his other hand. 'We're goin' home, Baby Prince.' I put my tiny paw into his, wide as an atlas, wrapping all the way around mine and pulling me up to sit in front of him. He told me to hold fast to the saddle horn, but I had a preference to burying my fingers in Dollar's dusty mane, who carried us home with a gentle canter. It wasn't until we got back to the cabin that we realised the cannibals' two black mules had followed us back. Papa Prince put them in the barn with Dollar.
When he carried me into the cabin to pass me to my weepy Mama, he did as he was told by her whilst my bath was made, got me some food when he was told to, and remained completely silent.
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Edit: Apparently I can't add tags?
Author: bramblyhuck
Rating: I rated this as 'M' on fanfiction.net, and I think that's the same as NC-17? Mostly rated like that for swearing, and general 'gore', if you want to call it that.
Characters: Charlie Prince
Summary: About a boy called Charlie Prince. From the grass to the hay, how he was raised, how he grew, and how he met Ben Wade.
Warnings: Swearing
A/N: I wanted to write some fanfiction about Charlie without it being all crappy and stuff. I decided to start from when he was young right up until he meets Ben Wade, or maybe all the way up until he dies, or whatever. It's written in first person from Charlie's perspective, so some 'mistakes' in the grammar are intentional, to give the text the feel of Charlie's voice.
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Prologue
THE NAMING OF THE PRINCE
When I was dispensed from my mother’s womb, I remained relatively un-named, at least by regular standards, for a length of days that I cannot count on both my hands. Papa Prince, though not lawfully married to my mother, who I was never approved to dub ‘Mother’, but rather ‘Mama’, decided that I would just be Little Prince. Baby Prince. Princeling. These are the names I was dubbed for the initial weeks of my life. Finally my Mama had the idea that she ought to write of me to her Mama, that is my Grandmother, who I am required to dub ‘Mooma’, though I am not sure why, and I have never met her anyway and she is probably dead now, so the consequence is little. Mama felt that it would not be correct to write of me without proper naming when addressing Mooma. She penned the entire correspondence, leaving long gaps where she thought to insert my name afterwards. Mama and Papa Prince were in long conversation about the subject of my naming, at least as long as a woman can keep in conversation with a drunkard. After the discussion of my naming was ended, Papa Prince did not care what I was to be dubbed, but required that whatever I was to become, I would be a Mister Prince. Even though Mama and Papa Prince never got rightly married.
Mama had free rein to dub me how she wished, but she had left considerable gaps in her correspondence wherein she intended to insert my name. This is how I came to be named so lengthily. I will never know if she pre-thunk what she was writing afore she wrote it, or whether she let the pen choose the name for her as it moved along the paper. But since that moment I have been rightly dubbed as most proper people are: Charles Maxwell Mordecai Eli Prince
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Chapter One
THE BLACK COACH
Papa Prince was never in the same mind when he was choosing what he wanted to dub me in ordinary conversation.
'Mordecai,' he says.
'Don't dub me so,' says I, tenderly nudging the age of six years.
'Maxwell -'
'Nor that.'
On most occasions he would land upon 'Charles', and this I allowed Papa Prince to dub me, though I was already in the early stages of knowing that it wasn't rightly what I felt I was to be dubbed. I had a feeling that I was destined for greater namesakes and things like that, and a status hinting to the laypeople that I am in the habit of customarily expending vast amounts of currency on costly, fancy things. Just shy of six years, I would envision my future wealth in the shapes of dancing horses, fine gold fastenings on all of my attire and a grand parrot for my shoulder, like the vicious pirates in the stories I heard about from the one-eyed farrier. I also dreamt of having a black glossy coach like the one I seen in the town, carrying people from the church up over the crest of the hill that Mama and Papa Prince had forbade me to explore. I wanted that coach so badly, least until I unearthed that it was carrying dead people, taking them up and over the hill because that is where they buried the dead people. I unearthed that, being that I am a fellow white-hot on fire with inquisitiveness, when I sneaked from the cabin where I lived with Mama and Papa Prince one night as a young'un, all the way to the hill to see what secrets were concealed there.
That night I experienced one of the worst frights of my entire life. I discovered upon my arrival at the bone orchard a pair of grave-robbers, digging up a freshly lain cadaver by the light of the moon. I watched them, morbidly distracted from thoughts of my own safety as they fractured the casket and dragged out that cadaver like Papa Prince does when he brings home a buck he shot in the mountains. It was a woman cadaver, and when I seen her I gasped so loudly that I wished with my entire, tiny little body that I could have sucked that pitiful gasp right back in. But I could not, and the grave-robbers heard me, then they saw me and they catched me. I was only a small thing, running as fast as I could, and I did not get more than half way down the side of the hill afore one of them lifted me in the air with a grip like the jaws of a wild cat. I remember the way he was hissing, that grave-robber, as mad as a lynx with a stick of dynamite stuffed up its bung-hole.
I yelled like a moon-freak in his fat, nasty face, pulling hard on his twisty beard the way I knew Papa Prince hated.
'PAPA'S GONNA BREAK YOU.'
* * *
I don't recall what occurred between then and when I awakened with a dreadful sore head in the grave-robbers' hut. I could have mistaken it for an over-sized shitter, the way it stank so terrible. I was laying on the dirt-packed floor in the corner with my wrists and ankles bound and a gag to shut my mouth up. There was a pail near my feet, so I kicked it hard, spilling the liquid in it and screaming wildly through the cloth in my mouth. I couldn't see all that much, but I could tell that there was a fire in an adjoining room and that I was alone where I had been dumped. Least until my hollering brung one of the grave-robbers stomping in, roaring at me to shut my fat bazoo. It was not the bloated Hairy One, but the other, a stringy fellow with very bad yellow teeth, all snaggly in his mouth like he'd made hisself some dentures from the teeth of a horse.
I growled at him, but he bent over and smacked me violently across the side of my face. I fell quiet and still, for Papa Prince had taught me that the first blow is just a warning and not as heavy as what will come if that warning isn't heeded. Even though I lay there silent and unmoving as a dead fish with my eyes stinging, the crazy bastard struck me again. He did so over and over, probably until his arm got tired, and then he kicked me once in the stomach, figuring he hadn't done enough already. After that he stood over me, huffing like a buffalo, then dragged me by the hair into the next room where the fire and the other man was.
I cried so hard that night, so hard I thought I'd cry my own brains out, right through my eye-sockets. Not even Papa Prince ever beat me that brutal, and he was a real curly wolf, especially when he'd downed more shots of whiskey than me and Mama could count on our fingers put together. These grave-robbers weren't curly wolves or even depraved criminals by any standard normal folks would go by, they were the kind of God-dodging, half-human lunatics the old crone at the bar liked to tell spook stories about.
They were goddamn cannibals.
At that time in my life I didn't really know what a cannibal was. Mama used to tell me things to keep me in line, like if I didn't get into bed when she told me, or eat all my supper, the Indians would snatch me and dance around me as I cooked in my own juices on their crazy big fires. That used to fright me a lot, the thought of getting eaten by savages, and I wish I'd remembered my Mama's spook stories afore I took it upon myself to sneak out in the middle of the night to visit that fucking bone orchard. Because there I was, bound and gagged in God-knows-where, watching a pair of madmen carving up a dead woman they filched from the ground, as nonchalant as if they was chopping vegetables. The Toothy One sucked on his bloody fingers every now and then. The Hairy One hummed through the smoke of his quirley like what he was doing was the most natural thing in the world.
It was in those moments that I realised I'd pissed myself, watching them take their chosen cuts, favouring the woman's liver and kidneys and the fleshy areas around her chest, thighs and rump, throwing them in the hotpot over the fire. My britches were wet and uncomfortable and my nose was running into the gag like a biblical flood. The fear of being killed and chopped up and eaten is too big to fit inside a child. It's the kind of fear that fills you right up and then overflows, making it so you can't even move your limbs or think straight. I just lay paralyzed on the ground, covered in piss and snot, with blood dribbling in my eyes, whimpering for my beastly father to come and beat the loonies into the dirt and save me.
I seen Papa Prince break a man before. It was when a worn out traveller came by our cabin, riding a nag fit only for the crows, begging at our door that we may be kind enough to let him sleep in the barn for the night, and maybe have a chunk of bread or something. Papa Prince had been at the bottle already and was in that jolly kind of drunk mood (the kind that me and Mama preferred), and invited the creepy, haggard stranger right into our home. Straight away I figured Mama wasn't so keen when she didn't offer him anything to eat or drink, and just stood with a buttoned-up mouth beside the stove, disallowing me to stray further from her side than the distance her apron strings would stretch.
The stranger stayed in the cabin a while, drinking with Papa Prince and talking about the boring stuff grown men talk about. He had badly kept hair and watery eyes that didn't point in the same direction. He was the first person I'd seen with black teeth. His mouth was kind of foamy and those soggy wall-eyes wandered a little too liberally, something even Papa Prince picked up on through the haze of the whiskey. He pointed a finger on one of those giant hands that I both loved and so sorely hated.
'What choo eyeballin'?' He slurred. He had the undertone that made me and Mama cling together at the back of the house when he used it on us. 'You eyeballin' ma woman? You eyeballin' ma boy?'
The stranger blinked and licked at the foam around his lips. 'Not like I'm even touchin' her, is it? Can't touch someone with your eyes.' A quavering smile hung a little too long on those repulsive lips, right afore he licked them again, his eyes roving all over Mama.
Papa Prince moved so fast I didn't even realise what was happening until I heard the stranger screaming and choking. Papa Prince had one of them shot glasses (I think that he stole from the bar) and was stuffing it hard into the stranger's mouth. The stranger was flailing violently, his fingernails scratching lines into our wooden floor and his bandy legs kicking at our supper table. I screamed for fear at the awful sounds he was making, and then ran and hid under Mama's apron when I saw one of his fingernails snap clean off on the floor. Mama was screaming too.
I didn't watch what Papa Prince did to him, but I will remember the sounds I heard that night until I die. I heard the stranger choking hard, and then a sickening gurgle and a crack. What I heard after that I recognised as the sound of Papa Prince's fists crunching into a face. That sound went on for what felt like the whole night, and maybe it was the whole night, because when he was finished there was nothing left of the stranger's head, just a pulpy, runny mass on our floorboards, spread far around the stranger's shoulders like a blossoming halo of gore. I saw chipped up bone in that red puddle, and teeth and hair and an eyeball. I don't know if Papa Prince used only his fists to do all that, but I remember feeling profound wonder and fear at the awesome rawness of his sadism.
Me and Mama both wiped his fists and face clean that night, her sat to his right and me to his left on the bed. He shook and breathed hard like a wild animal, but he let us clean him with no protest. My Papa was a monster, and monsters eat cannibals.
But Papa Prince wasn't there. I was lying on the floor, just about to get turned into a stew and my monster of a Papa wasn't there to beat the cannibals' brains into the ground. I wailed so hard through that gag, not particularly caring that my noise might make the Toothy One come over and kick me in my little lily-liver again.
'Quiet yourself, you flaxen runt,' the Hairy One snarled. 'I can't stand any of that bitchin' and whingin' from children. Shut your fuckin' trap, boy.'
The Toothy One was licking at his hands, seeming to be lost in thought. 'Y'know...' he started off carefully. 'We can't turn him loose. He'll talk.'
'No shit,' said the Hairy One, shaking his head and dipping a ladle into the hotpot to swirl the woman's meat around in the liquid. 'We're gonna cut his throat and dump him in the desert for crow bait.' He blew on the ladle and sipped to check the seasoning. 'After we eat.'
'We're gonna dump him?' The Toothy One turned to look at me all over, and I looked right back, my eyes as big in my head as those of an owl. I didn't realise that I had been holding my breath whilst they'd been talking about what to do with me. The Toothy One looked back at the Hairy One. 'We're just gonna throw him away? All that meat?'
The Hairy One became still, his eyes fixing on his cannibal friend, before rolling right around in his fat head to fix on me. He thunk long and hard about something whilst he was staring at me and it made me squirm, like there was a thousand worms trying to wriggle their way out from under my skin. He flicked the ash of his smoker to the side. 'He's kinda skinny.'
The Toothy One snorted and gave an ugly honk of laughter. 'But he's young! And fresh, not been in the ground. Like lamb meat, I'll bet. Imagine that liver. Imagine it.' He gazed down on me with the glint of the Devil himself in those eyes. 'Just imagine it, fried in butter...'
The talk of my freshness and lambiness and how my goddamn lily-liver was gonna taste fried in butter was too much. I had felt the faintest sparkle of hope when the Hairy One said they were gonna dump me in the desert, there might have been a small chance to escape between being taken out there and having my throat cut (unless they was gonna cut my throat first), but now my brain was saturated with the purest fear that every human prays to avoid. They wouldn't need to take me anywhere or hide me or whatever if they really were going to eat me. They could do it right there and then if they wanted to. My little heart was ready to beat its way right out of my ribcage; it was pounding so hard that it sent the sharpest pain right through my body and all along my backbone. I was sobbing again, but I had no tears left and it just felt like my head was turning inside out. I howled through the gag, trying to beg them not to eat me, but my words were lost and came out as a muffled parody through the snotty cloth. They roared with laughter. They could have brung the roof of the hut down with that raucous noise, and it made me sick to my stomach. I felt my guts churning hard; felt the hand that rises up through the chest and into the back of the throat, then clutches at the tongue and makes it feel tight. I whined as my stomach started pumping and the acid burnt my throat, but I couldn't spew right because of that fucking gag. I remember watching ribbons of vomit shooting out of my nose across the dusty floor. It was the worst thing I'd ever felt. Papa Prince's fists were like feathery kisses compared to that ache and shame.
'Shit!' I heard one of them shout. 'Fuckin' brat's gonna choke on his own vomit afore we get to kill him right! Fuck, take it off, take that fucking gag off!'
The Toothy One leapt over to me and ripped the gag off my head, tossing it into the corner with a disgusted face. He cursed sharply and put his foot into my gut, which only made me spew more of that horrid bitty slop, blooming on the ground in front of my face. 'Ah shit,' he grumbled. 'Look, he pissed hisself, too.'
The Hairy One grunted. 'Go get water out of the well. We'll splash him down afore we butcher him.'
The Toothy one was gone, going to get that water like the Hairy One told him to. My mind was elsewhere, in a different world by that point, so potent was my despair. It was like I'd come out of my body, because I remember what happened next as though I was watching it from someone else's view. The Hairy One trudged over to me, careful not to put his boots into my puddle of vomit and hauled me to my feet. He had to slap me real hard several times before I could stand by my ownself without slumping straight back down like a sack of dead rats. He was angry at me, that much I could tell. I figured the fat bastard was just cranky because that dead woman's meat wouldn't cook fast enough. He blew the smoke of a fresh quirley into my face, making my nose wrinkle. I stared hatefully into his rage-filled face, though somehow his anger was considerably pale compared to what washed over me and nearly drowned me in my own home when Papa Prince was on the war path. I carried on staring into his hideous, beardy face as hard and serious as any six-year old runt could, not caring that I had blood and vomit, tears and snot mashed all over me.
He just sneered at that, backhanding me and sending me reeling into the wall. I coughed, fresh tears bubbling over the rims of my big marble eyes. So I wasn't all that tough, not back in them days at least. I flinched when he marched toward me with a blade in his hand, thinking that was it, the moment when he was going to cut me and bleed me and then slice me up into steaks and stuff, but he didn't. He cut my bonds and barked at me to strip, because they were gonna wash me off and then hang me by my ankles. He said it was to let the blood pool in my head. Then they were gonna cut my throat and let it all drain out, skin me and cut me into strips, make me into jerky so that they could stretch me to last their appetites until they arrived in the next town, find the next bone orchard ready for the plundering.
Needless to express, I was shaking too ferociously to even make my namby-pamby little paws into fists, let alone direct them to undress myself. I just cried and gurgled. He was getting ready to beat me again when I nearly coughed my heart up at the sound of a booming gunshot, right outside the hut. I turned into a statue, my eyes nearly falling out of my head. The Toothy One had never returned with that water. The Hairy One kicked me to the floor with a snarl, spitting out his quirley as he drew his pistol in his spare hand, fleeing the room and running into the night. He might have thought it was his friend shooting at something in the distance that probably wasn't even there, but I sure as Hellfire knew who it was firing that gun outside. That gunshot was the hallowed battle cry of an 1869 Smith and Wesson Schofield. The same as Papa Prince used.
The Schofield blasted once more and I heard a man yelling like the hand of the Devil was trying to drag him down to Hell through a hole in the ground. There was a dull thudding afterwards, fairly rhythmic and steady, and I imagined Papa Prince was pounding on whoever he shot out there with his almighty fist, or maybe his boot. Maybe he was even using that Schofield like a club to stove the side of that cannibal's head in. I seen him whack a man upside his head with that Schofield in the bar when he realised he'd been cheated in a game of poker.
The thudding stopped. There were no more shouts from Papa Prince's gun. I was pissing down my leg again, shaking like a rattle-snake tail, watching as the woman stew started to boil over and make the fire hiss. There was a nasty scum on the surface of the water in the hotpot and as it bubbled out and into the flame it made a horrid stink. My tears were all gone.
'Papa!' I wailed. I knew it was him out there. 'Where are you?'
I heard the scuffing of footfalls in the dirt. Papa Prince barged into the room, his Schofield now holstered, which let me know he'd done taking care of the cannibals. He was staring hard at me where I stood stupefied in my own puddle of vomit, snot pouring abundantly and my fingers plucking at my uncomfortably wet britches. I howled, 'Papa!' I left worrying my damp crotch to hold my arms and hands aloft for Papa Prince to scoop me up and take me home to the cabin, but he didn't do that. Instead, with his face all red and his eyes popping, he came across the room in three giant strides and lent the back of his hand to my cheek. I howled, stumbling over and hitting my head against the rough stone wall. 'Papa!'
'Idiot boy!' He bellowed. 'Stupid boy! What was you thinking, runnin' away and gettin' snatched?'
Right then I didn't know what I was thinking; my brains had been knocked sideways that night more times than I could count. 'I just want to go home, Papa!' He hit me again, and I fell into my pond of vomit. 'Papa, I wanna go home! Take me home!' He hit me one last time, and started with his shouting again. My ears were filled with a noise like the sound of a rushing river and I couldn't hear anything that came out his mouth, even as he leant over me. I was weeping and whining. No doubt my face was as red as his. I managed to croak out my wish once more in a small, shuddering voice, 'I wanna go home, Papa.' He was stock still then, and I realised that he'd seen that dead woman on the other side of the fire, with her clothes all ripped off and her belly cut open wide with things hanging out, square chunks of her hips and thighs and breasts missing. Then he saw the hotpot, still bubbling over, the meat roiling violently. I couldn't see his face. He spat on the fire, then turned to grab my wrist, dragging me outside like a three-legged sheep. I saw the bloody mess of the Hairy One near the wall by the door.
'Papa -'
'Shut your face, Charles.'
He dragged me over to the well where I saw the body of the Toothy One slumped beside it, the bucket by his head. Papa Prince grabbed the bucket and set about filling it, and as he did so he ordered me to strip and throw my clothes and shoes away on the ground. 'You ain't never wearing those clothes again, boy.' I did as I was told, though I struggled with my still shaking hands. When he seen that I was fully stripped, he turned to me with that bucket, now filled with water. I stood waiting like a thick mule. I was only a young'un and I was severely shook up, considering I nearly got ate by two cannibals, but I guess anyone should have known what was coming next.
He threw the bucket of water, icy cold, all over my little candlestick body. I yelped. 'Papa!' He filled the bucket again. 'Papa, no!' He held the bucket still for a second. 'You're gonna rub yourself down.' Then he chucked the water over me. 'Get yourself clean, Charles.' It made me gasp like a lunger caught in a dust storm, how cold that water was, but I did as Papa Prince said and rubbed myself all over, cleaning my face and between my legs. I was painted with big ugly blue patches, mighty bruises from where that bastard had beat on me. Papa Prince was breathing hard through his nose as he surveyed me, frowning like he does when I know he's thinking deep. 'Your Mama's gonna have to make you a bath when we get back. She's gonna have to get that soap on you.'
I wasn't crying anymore. Papa Prince took off his over-jacket and wrapped me up tight in it, afore jumping on his horse, a red, dome-faced stallion as tall as a building in my young eyes. We dubbed him 'Dollar Bill', but sometimes he would walk to us from the paddock if we just dubbed him 'Dollar' or 'Bill'. Papa Prince found his stirrups and gathered the reins in one hand, whilst leaning from the saddle and stretching out his other hand. 'We're goin' home, Baby Prince.' I put my tiny paw into his, wide as an atlas, wrapping all the way around mine and pulling me up to sit in front of him. He told me to hold fast to the saddle horn, but I had a preference to burying my fingers in Dollar's dusty mane, who carried us home with a gentle canter. It wasn't until we got back to the cabin that we realised the cannibals' two black mules had followed us back. Papa Prince put them in the barn with Dollar.
When he carried me into the cabin to pass me to my weepy Mama, he did as he was told by her whilst my bath was made, got me some food when he was told to, and remained completely silent.
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Edit: Apparently I can't add tags?